Standing in the way of worship:

...Yet the changes will not occur of themselves...

...And, although the failure of the priests to carry out the prescribed changes may be unconscious, it constitutes a genuine clerical abuse of the eucharistic sacrament and points to a problem we have not yet begun to deal with in the church...

...Again, the documents of the reform make it clear that "the more perfect form of participation in the Mass" occurs when the faithful "receive the Lord's Body from the same sacrifice" (SC, 55) because "their participation in the sacrifice then and there being celebrated is more visibly manifested" (Instruction, 56...

...Despite the real differences in language and customs in these countries, I have witnessed a distressing similarity in the widespread neglect of significant reforms that followed the publication of The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium) twenty-five years ago...

...In addition, it stresses the necessary role of the "bread which earth has given" and the "fruit of the vine" both of which are produced by "human hands" and provided by the "sweat of the brow" of the laity who constitute and support our liturgical assemblies...

...We are paying the price across the board in the liturgy because priests, no longer secure in their role, grumpily and defensively keep the laity at arm's length, both symbolically and actually...

...Make no mistake...

...The ritualized action known as the "offertory procession" is thus the "meaningful and desirable" way that this offering of the sacrifice is made manifest...

...If this suggestion is correct, I would complement it with a therapeutic suggestion...

...For, just as in the texts of the Midnight Mass the birth of Christ is called a "wondrous exchange" (haec sacrosancta commercia) of human and divine natures, so in the Prayer over the Gifts in the Christmas liturgy (December 29) the elements of bread and wine are said to be part of a "wonderful exchange" (commercia gloriosa...

...But the instruction specifies that individual hosts (or "additional small hosts") are a possibility if necessary (Instruction, 283) and supplementary to "the larger hosts which are to be broken into smaller parts" (for the congregation no doubt...

...Twenty-five years later this vital relationship at the heart of Catholic life and worship still needs to be addressed.ill needs to be addressed...

...The laity must find the wherewithal to coax their clergy into the collaborative endeavor which the council proclaimed the liturgy to be...

...It will take a laity unwilling to be excluded from exercising their priestly function at Mass, who are discontent with being mere consumers of the spiritual goods their priests produce and who are willing to undertake "full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations" (SC, 14...

...Although the priest is understood as acting in persona Christi, he presides over the community as a special "member of the community" (Instruction, 60) all of whose lay members also give thanks to God and offer the sacrifice "with him" (61...

...Faith tells us it is of such losses that real gains are made...

...Similarly, the prominence of the "exchange of gifts" in our reformed order of worship stresses the extent to which the presentation of bread and wine by the faithful represents an essential part of their proper role in the ritualization of our participation in Christ's sacrifice "until he comes in glory...

...Many priests are engaging in a subtle, and largely unconscious, act of resistance to their "demoted" status...

...The Eucharist is not "the sacrament of our salvation" because it suppresses the natural elements of food, but precisely because it "perfects" (or carries their natural meaning through to completion) the bread and wine as spiritual nourishment...

...Priests have a lot to lose when they shed their protective shells and put aside their special privileges (reduced as these might have lately become...

...In 1963 everyone underestimated the depth of the changes that postconciliar priests and laity would have to undergo to become real collaborators in the worship life of the church...

...But this operation of grace does not depend on an ordained presider alone, but on the whole body of the church worshiping together in a particular time and place...

...The sacrifice which is offered does not simply bring Christ down on our altars but gives back to God (through the medium of praise in the eucharistic prayer) the only "holy and perfect sacrifice" which is none other than "the gift You have given us," i.e., Christ...

...By continuing to follow the outmoded practice of having a "priest's host" (consecrated at each Mass) and "small hosts" (usually reserved in extraordinary numbers in a tabernacle), priests guarantee their special status in another subtly symbolic way...

...If the theoretical shift from a paradigm of sacrificial power to a paradigm of exchange of gifts has occurred in the Eucharist, it seems important for us to find new ways of convincing priests that they are the necessary catalysts of this "wondrous exchange" between God and humanity...

...This exclusion of lay participation is again underscored at the time of Communion...

...But the practical changes necessary to accomplish this-to allow priests to surrender their needs for spiritual power and sacramental privileges (often urged as compensations for obligatory celibacy) and to improve their ability to communicate both verbally and symbolically so as to become the actual "ministers" of the sacrament-will require care and encouragement...

...Making no distinction between Sunday and weekdays, the Roman Missal accounts the "manner in which the gifts are brought to the altar" among the actions to be "performed with solemnity" (General Instructions, 22) and states, as well, that it is "both meaningful and desirable that the faithful should bring up the bread and wine," declaring this a "ritual" that is "still meaningful and of spiritual value" (49...

...For a priest to ignore the principle of ministerial diversity (i.e., do every role himself), abuse or leave out the homily, or fail to preside over the Eucharist prayerfully or with dignity, these are surely more immediate and serious problems than leaving out the offertory procession...

...When denied their proper role, the congregation gets a clear message that there are really two religious events taking place in this church: the action of the ordained minister(s) and the laity's secondary share in its fruits...

...While it might be difficult to document this approach in textbooks, it was undoubtedly the dominant mythos of clerical training and has proved to be enduring, not because of its theological cogency, but because of its strong emotional and symbolic appeal to priests...

...Understood in this way, the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Communion are identical...

...His role in the liturgy makes him no holier than others, even formally...

...The first of the ignored practices is the "offertory procession...

...Today, twenty-five years after the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy's clarion call for a renewal of our worship life, priests are still acting out of an earlier symbol system, consciously or not...

...In all but one case I witnessed in the past few months, there was no ritual participation of the faithful in the preparation of the gifts, although participation was the principal motive for the reform (cf...

...However, what is conveyed to an alert laity in these situations is that their participation in this sacred event is secondary...

...Not being "on assignment" as a priest, I have attended Mass in Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, and Italy...

...They certainly remain "necessary" as ordained ministers through whom the grace of the sacrament is given ex opere operato...

...Although the deviations may at first seem slight, their pervasiveness indicates that the reform of the liturgy has failed to accomplish one of its primary goals: to make clear that the Mass, by reason of baptism, is the celebration of the whole body of the church demanding the "full, conscious, and active participation" of all the faithful (SC, 14...

...In other texts of the Missal the "sacrifice" is labeled "this exchange of gifts" (Wednesday, Lent II), which exchange is also understood in the Easter liturgy as the basis of our sharing the risen life of Christ...

...At best, arguments against Communion from the chalice based on reasons of inconvenience or concerns for health seem secondary...

...Here, too, we should seek an underlying, unconscious reason for the resistance of priests to carry out the clear command of Jesus to "Take and drink of this, all of you...

...But their ability to relate the mystery to the "here and now" of their community's life, their enthusiasm to help people discover their own "rights and obligations" as baptized members of the Body of Christ and to act intelligently and enthusiastically upon them, their desire to include the laity rather than exclude them in the celebrational dynamics-all these are the natural means by which the grace of the sacrament is given ex opere operantis...

...They are clearly saying by their symbolic actions that they are having a problem defining themselves as "ministers" (i.e., servants) of God and the people rather than as hierophants engaged in unique and supernaturally powerful actions...

...The model that dominated late-Tridentine eucharistic theology saw the Mass as a sacrifice, but used aparticular (and inadequate) understanding of the term...

...Both terms preserve and make prominent the admixture of human and divine elements which constitute the mystery of sacramentality...

...In theory, the priest might as easily put the consecrated element (of bread at least) directly in the tabernacle or into the monstrance for adoration because the concrete effect of the sacrifice was the miracle of the Real Presence...

...We do not need less leadership within the worshiping community, we need more and better leadership: the kind that helps all the members of the congregation discover their own natural gifts which, like the bread and wine, are made present so as to be transformed by the "Giver of the gifts we bring" into yet more fruitful gifts with which to build up his body the church...

...In this new (and largely unrealized) framework of the way priest and congregation act out their respective roles in the liturgical celebration, the priest is contextualized within the fabric of the whole body of the church...

...Rather, it seems that the historical reservation of the chalice to the priest (a reaction at Trent to Protestant criticism) has become another point of clerical privilege that many priests are slow to put aside...

...But once we examine the reason why the ritual bringing forward by the faithful of the elements of bread and wine is not being done we will discover a basic failure in the understanding of the reform...

...These refusals are compounded further by the added reluctance of so many priests to take advantage of the liturgical legislation that allows the frequent sharing of the cup with the congregation...

...I do not emphasize the necessary and catalytic role of the priest as another, more subtle, form of clericalism...

...Indeed, the same principle holds true, to a lesser degree, for the lectors, music ministers, deacons, servers, etc...

...What is more, if we take into account the kind of personal attachment clerical culture has promoted between a priest and "his" chalice (sometimes outfitted with the wedding ring of a parent and even buried with a priest), it is possible to conclude that the reluctance of some priests to foster the congregational reception of the chalice lies deep in the subliminal area of clerical emotional symbolism and control...

...Its strong emphasis on the unique competence of the ordained priest who is empowered to consecrate the bread and wine and bring Christ "down" on our altars fueled generations of vocations talks, but it gave little or no role to the laity in the effecting of the mystery of the Eucharist...

...Insisting that for there to be a sacrifice there must be an act of destruction, it saw in the separate consecration of the bread and wine the ritual reenactment of Jesus' death...

...Some will argue that this is hardly the worst problem with the liturgy today...

...No one who has ever seen a concelebration where plans were made so that each concelebrating priest received both halves of a large host can doubt that the concept of the "priest's host" is alive and well...

...It failed to anticipate and provide for the shift in symbolic paradigm it called for priests to undergo...

...The liturgical reform was flawed, then, not on the level of its theology (which still represents an untapped resource for many clergy and laity) but on the level of implementation...

...Another indication of priests' resistance resides in the companion abuse I noted before: their widespread refusal, contrary to the liturgical norms, to consecrate and distribute sufficient bread for all the communicants...

...While the priest continues to have unique and specific roles within the liturgy, he no longer fulfills Lacordaire's holy card job description, in which the priest entered a figurative Holy of Holies bringing men to God and God to men...

...The entire offering is called an "exchange of gifts" based on analogy with the incarnation itself...

...A large host only fulfills the symbol of the "one Bread" when it is shared by the community gathered for the Eucharist...

...But the symbolic role of the priest, complemented (properly, I believe) by that of deacons, extraordinary ministers, lay readers, etc., experienced a diminution of its hyper-sacral character...

...Despite twenty-five years of admonition, instruction, and reformation, earlier practices and earlier presuppositions remain intact...

...But nowhere is there provision for a single, large host (often the only one visible to the congregation) which the priest alone is to consume in its entirety...

...It is opposition to this change, more than any other, I believe, that has led to the abuses I described above...

...Spiritual and psychological supports that allow men, often trained in a caste mentality (which seems to be back in vogue in seminaries today), to risk being fellow-disciples with the laity would be of great assistance...

...There was no need for any active participants other than the priest whose act of sacramental power made Christ present for our adoration or consumption...

...The rehabilitation of this ancient notion of exchange emphasizes not an act of priestly power or sacramental will, but the double-gift, both of nature (the bread and wine) and of grace (the Body and Blood of Christ), that the church celebrates and shares in...

...By contrast, the conciliar and postconciliar reform, basing its premises and its theology on more ancient, communitarian, and authentic traditions of the Eucharist, used a broader model of sacrifice in which the worshipers as a whole (granting the instrumentality of the ordained minister) are said to participate in and share communion with God through an "exchange of gifts...

...The priest at the altar receives "his" host and drinks from "his" chalice and then turns or sends an assisting priest or eucharistic minister to the tabernacle to communicate the faithful from the reserved sacrament...

...Yet, contrary to this clear directive, it remains the general practice that priests either approach the altar at the beginning of the liturgy of the word with chalice and paten as of old or, later, they bring the gifts from a credence table with or without the help of servers...

...SC, 1,14...

...Priority of place in this task is only taken from the priest by our own brand of low churchpersons, often in reaction to so many years of poor leadership in the liturgy on behalf of the clergy...

...Ignoring the Roman Canon's reference to itself as a sacrifice of praise, common seminary fare adopted an allegorical understanding of the Mass "as the same sacrifice as the sacrifice of the cross...

...This was not the case for bishops who, by and large, emerged from Vatican II with an expanded and independent job description and a symbolic role that was clearly enhanced...

...see Third Instruction on the Correct Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 5...

...The priest received the elements of the sacrifice in Communion almost as a spiritual bonus (lay people were not really encouraged to receive regularly until the reform of 1957...

...The incipient liturgical theology of Pius XIFs Mystici Corporis Christi in the 1940s was slow to change this view...